OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
DMCL: Distillation Multiple Choice Learning for Multimodal Action Recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

In this work, we address the problem of learning an ensemble of specialist networks using multimodal data, while considering the realistic and challenging scenario of possible missing modalities at test time. Our goal is to leverage the complementary information of multiple modalities to the benefit of the ensemble and each individual network. We introduce a novel Distillation Multiple Choice Learning framework for multimodal data, where different modality networks learn in a cooperative setting from scratch, strengthening one another. The modality networks learned using our method achieve significantly higher accuracy than if trained separately, due to the guidance of other modalities. We evaluate this approach on three video action recognition benchmark datasets. We obtain state-of-the-art results in comparison to other approaches that work with missing modalities at test time.
A Brooks-like result for graph powers
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2019
Year: 2019

Coloring a graph $G$ consists in finding an assignment of colors $c: V(G)\to\{1,\ldots,p\}$ such that any pair of adjacent vertices receives different colors. The minimum integer $p$ such that a coloring exists is called the chromatic number of $G$, denoted by $χ(G)$. We investigate the chromatic number of powers of graphs, i.e. the graphs obtained from a graph $G$ by adding an edge between every pair of vertices at distance at most $k$. For $k=1$, Brooks' theorem states that every connected graph of maximum degree $Δ\geqslant 3$ excepted the clique on $Δ+1$ vertices can be colored using $Δ$ colors (i.e. one color less than the naive upper bound). For $k\geqslant 2$, a similar result holds: excepted for Moore graphs, the naive upper bound can be lowered by 2. We prove that for $k\geqslant 3$ and for every $Δ$, we can actually spare $k-2$ colors, excepted for a finite number of graphs. We then improve this value to $Θ((Δ-1)^{\frac{k}{12}})$.
BETANAS: BalancEd TrAining and selective drop for Neural Architecture Search
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Automatic neural architecture search techniques are becoming increasingly important in machine learning area. Especially, weight sharing methods have shown remarkable potentials on searching good network architectures with few computational resources. However, existing weight sharing methods mainly suffer limitations on searching strategies: these methods either uniformly train all network paths to convergence which introduces conflicts between branches and wastes a large amount of computation on unpromising candidates, or selectively train branches with different frequency which leads to unfair evaluation and comparison among paths. To address these issues, we propose a novel neural architecture search method with balanced training strategy to ensure fair comparisons and a selective drop mechanism to reduce conflicts among candidate paths. The experimental results show that our proposed method can achieve a leading performance of 79.0% on ImageNet under mobile settings, which outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in both accuracy and efficiency.
Quadruply Stochastic Gradient Method for Large Scale Nonlinear Semi-Supervised Ordinal Regression AUC Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Semi-supervised ordinal regression (S$^2$OR) problems are ubiquitous in real-world applications, where only a few ordered instances are labeled and massive instances remain unlabeled. Recent researches have shown that directly optimizing concordance index or AUC can impose a better ranking on the data than optimizing the traditional error rate in ordinal regression (OR) problems. In this paper, we propose an unbiased objective function for S$^2$OR AUC optimization based on ordinal binary decomposition approach. Besides, to handle the large-scale kernelized learning problems, we propose a scalable algorithm called QS$^3$ORAO using the doubly stochastic gradients (DSG) framework for functional optimization. Theoretically, we prove that our method can converge to the optimal solution at the rate of $O(1/t)$, where $t$ is the number of iterations for stochastic data sampling. Extensive experimental results on various benchmark and real-world datasets also demonstrate that our method is efficient and effective while retaining similar generalization performance.
Algorithmic Extremism: Examining YouTube's Rabbit Hole of Radicalization
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2019
Year: 2019

The role that YouTube and its behind-the-scenes recommendation algorithm plays in encouraging online radicalization has been suggested by both journalists and academics alike. This study directly quantifies these claims by examining the role that YouTube's algorithm plays in suggesting radicalized content. After categorizing nearly 800 political channels, we were able to differentiate between political schemas in order to analyze the algorithm traffic flows out and between each group. After conducting a detailed analysis of recommendations received by each channel type, we refute the popular radicalization claims. To the contrary, these data suggest that YouTube's recommendation algorithm actively discourages viewers from visiting radicalizing or extremist content. Instead, the algorithm is shown to favor mainstream media and cable news content over independent YouTube channels with slant towards left-leaning or politically neutral channels. Our study thus suggests that YouTube's recommendation algorithm fails to promote inflammatory or radicalized content, as previously claimed by several outlets.
Maximum independent sets in (pyramid, even hole)-free graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2019
Year: 2019

A \emph{hole} in a graph is an induced cycle with at least 4 vertices. A graph is \emph{even-hole-free} if it does not contain a hole on an even number of vertices. A \emph{pyramid} is a graph made of three chordless paths $P_1 = a \dots b_1$, $P_2 = a \dots b_2$, $P_3 = a \dots b_3$ of length at least~1, two of which have length at least 2, vertex-disjoint except at $a$, and such that $b_1b_2b_3$ is a triangle and no edges exist between the paths except those of the triangle and the three edges incident with $a$. We give a polynomial time algorithm to compute a maximum weighted independent set in a even-hole-free graph that contains no pyramid as an induced subgraph. Our result is based on a decomposition theorem and on bounding the number of minimal separators. All our results hold for a slightly larger class of graphs, the class of (square, prism, pyramid, theta, even wheel)-free graphs.
Integration of Static and Dynamic Analysis for Malware Family Classification with Composite Neural Network
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Deep learning has been used in the research of malware analysis. Most classification methods use either static analysis features or dynamic analysis features for malware family classification, and rarely combine them as classification features and also no extra effort is spent integrating the two types of features. In this paper, we combine static and dynamic analysis features with deep neural networks for Windows malware classification. We develop several methods to generate static and dynamic analysis features to classify malware in different ways. Given these features, we conduct experiments with composite neural network, showing that the proposed approach performs best with an accuracy of 83.17% on a total of 80 malware families with 4519 malware samples. Additionally, we show that using integrated features for malware family classification outperforms using static features or dynamic features alone. We show how static and dynamic features complement each other for malware classification.
The aBc Problem and Equator Sampling Renyi Divergences
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2019
Year: 2019

We investigate the problem of approximating the product $a^TBc$, where $a,c\in S^{n-1}$ and $B\in O_n$, in models of communication complexity and streaming algorithms. The worst meaningful approximation is to simply decide whether the product is 1 or -1, given the promise that it is either. We call that problem the aBc problem. This is a modification of computing approximate inner products, by allowing a basis change. While very efficient streaming algorithms and one-way communication protocols are known for simple inner products (approximating $a^Tc$) we show that no efficient one-way protocols/streaming algorithms exist for the aBc problem. In communication complexity we consider the 3-player number-in-hand model. 1) In communication complexity $a^TBc$ can be approximated within additive error $ε$ with communication $O(\sqrt n/ε^2)$ by a one-way protocol Charlie to Bob to Alice. 2) The $aBc$ problem has a streaming algorithm that uses space $O(\sqrt n \log n)$. 3) Any one-way communication protocol for $aBc$ needs communication at least $Ω(n^{1/3})$, and we prove a tight results regarding a communication tradeoff: if Charlie and Bob communicate over many rounds such that Charlie communicates $o(n^{2/3})$ and Bob $o(n^{1/3})$, and then the transcript is sent to Alice, the error will be large. 4) To establish our lower bound we show concentration results for Renyi divergences under the event of restricting a density function on the sphere to a random equator and subsequently normalizing the restricted density function. This extends previous results by Klartag and Regev for set sizes to Renyi divergences of arbitrary density functions. 5) We show a strong concentration result for conditional Renyi divergences on bipartite systems for all $α>1$.
Aggressive Aggregation: a New Paradigm for Program Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2019
Year: 2019

In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for program optimization which is based on aggressive aggregation, i.e., on a partial evaluation-based decomposition of acyclic program fragments into a pair of computationally optimal structures: an Algebraic Decision Diagram (ADD) to capture conditional branching and a parallel assignment that refers to an Expression DAG (ED) which realizes redundancy-free computation. The point of this decomposition into, in fact, side-effect-free component structures allows for powerful optimization that semantically comprise effects traditionally aimed at by SSA form transformation, code specialization, common subexpression elimination, and (partial) redundancy elimination. We illustrate our approach along an optimization of the well-known iterative Fibonacci program, which, typically, is considered to lack any optimization potential. The point here is that our technique supports loop unrolling as a first class optimization technique and is tailored to optimally aggregate large program fragments, especially those resulting from multiple loop unrollings. For the Fibonacci program, this results in a performance improvement beyond an order of magnitude.
ADD-Lib: Decision Diagrams in Practice
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

In the paper, we present the ADD-Lib, our efficient and easy to use framework for Algebraic Decision Diagrams (ADDs). The focus of the ADD-Lib is not so much on its efficient implementation of individual operations, which are taken by other established ADD frameworks, but its ease and flexibility, which arise at two levels: the level of individual ADD-tools, which come with a dedicated user-friendly web-based graphical user interface, and at the meta level, where such tools are specified. Both levels are described in the paper: the meta level by explaining how we can construct an ADD-tool tailored for Random Forest refinement and evaluation, and the accordingly generated Web-based domain-specific tool, which we also provide as an artifact for cooperative experimentation. In particular, the artifact allows readers to combine a given Random Forest with their own ADDs regarded as expert knowledge and to experience the corresponding effect.
Forman-Ricci curvature and Persistent homology of unweighted complex networks
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2019
Year: 2019

We present the application of topological data analysis (TDA) to study unweighted complex networks via their persistent homology. By endowing appropriate weights that capture the inherent topological characteristics of such a network, we convert an unweighted network into a weighted one. Standard TDA tools are then used to compute their persistent homology. To this end, we use two main quantifiers: a local measure based on Forman's discretized version of Ricci curvature, and a global measure based on edge betweenness centrality. We have employed these methods to study various model and real-world networks. Our results show that persistent homology can be used to distinguish between model and real networks with different topological properties.
Planar Diameter via Metric Compression
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2019
Year: 2019

We develop a new approach for distributed distance computation in planar graphs that is based on a variant of the metric compression problem recently introduced by Abboud et al. [SODA'18]. One of our key technical contributions is in providing a compression scheme that encodes all $S \times T$ distances using $\widetilde{O}(|S|\cdot poly(D)+|T|)$ bits for unweighted graphs with diameter $D$. This significantly improves the state of the art of $\widetilde{O}(|S|\cdot 2^{D}+|T| \cdot D)$ bits. We also consider an approximate version of the problem for \emph{weighted} graphs, where the goal is to encode $(1+ε)$ approximation of the $S \times T$ distances. At the heart of this compact compression scheme lies a VC-dimension type argument on planar graphs. This efficient compression scheme leads to several improvements and simplifications in the setting of diameter computation, most notably in the distributed setting: - There is an $\widetilde{O}(D^5)$-round randomized distributed algorithm for computing the diameter in planar graphs, w.h.p. - There is an $\widetilde{O}(D^3)+ poly(\log n/ε)\cdot D^2$-round randomized distributed algorithm for computing an $(1+ε)$ approximation of the diameter in weighted graphs with polynomially bounded weights, w.h.p. No sublinear round algorithms were known for these problems before. These distributed constructions are based on a new recursive graph decomposition that preserves the (unweighted) diameter of each of the subgraphs up to a logarithmic term. Using this decomposition, we also get an \emph{exact} SSSP tree computation within $\widetilde{O}(D^2)$ rounds.
An Analysis of the Expressiveness of Deep Neural Network Architectures Based on Their Lipschitz Constants
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have emerged as a popular mathematical tool for function approximation due to their capability of modelling highly nonlinear functions. Their applications range from image classification and natural language processing to learning-based control. Despite their empirical successes, there is still a lack of theoretical understanding of the representative power of such deep architectures. In this work, we provide a theoretical analysis of the expressiveness of fully-connected, feedforward DNNs with 1-Lipschitz activation functions. In particular, we characterize the expressiveness of a DNN by its Lipchitz constant. By leveraging random matrix theory, we show that, given sufficiently large and randomly distributed weights, the expected upper and lower bounds of the Lipschitz constant of a DNN and hence their expressiveness increase exponentially with depth and polynomially with width, which gives rise to the benefit of the depth of DNN architectures for efficient function approximation. This observation is consistent with established results based on alternative expressiveness measures of DNNs. In contrast to most of the existing work, our analysis based on the Lipschitz properties of DNNs is applicable to a wider range of activation nonlinearities and potentially allows us to make sensible comparisons between the complexity of a DNN and the function to be approximated by the DNN. We consider this work to be a step towards understanding the expressive power of DNNs and towards designing appropriate deep architectures for practical applications such as system control.
PANTHER: A Programmable Architecture for Neural Network Training Harnessing Energy-efficient ReRAM
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2019
Year: 2019

The wide adoption of deep neural networks has been accompanied by ever-increasing energy and performance demands due to the expensive nature of training them. Numerous special-purpose architectures have been proposed to accelerate training: both digital and hybrid digital-analog using resistive RAM (ReRAM) crossbars. ReRAM-based accelerators have demonstrated the effectiveness of ReRAM crossbars at performing matrix-vector multiplication operations that are prevalent in training. However, they still suffer from inefficiency due to the use of serial reads and writes for performing the weight gradient and update step. A few works have demonstrated the possibility of performing outer products in crossbars, which can be used to realize the weight gradient and update step without the use of serial reads and writes. However, these works have been limited to low precision operations which are not sufficient for typical training workloads. Moreover, they have been confined to a limited set of training algorithms for fully-connected layers only. To address these limitations, we propose a bit-slicing technique for enhancing the precision of ReRAM-based outer products, which is substantially different from bit-slicing for matrix-vector multiplication only. We incorporate this technique into a crossbar architecture with three variants catered to different training algorithms. To evaluate our design on different types of layers in neural networks (fully-connected, convolutional, etc.) and training algorithms, we develop PANTHER, an ISA-programmable training accelerator with compiler support. Our evaluation shows that PANTHER achieves up to $8.02\times$, $54.21\times$, and $103\times$ energy reductions as well as $7.16\times$, $4.02\times$, and $16\times$ execution time reductions compared to digital accelerators, ReRAM-based accelerators, and GPUs, respectively.
Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2019
Year: 2019

We propose a method to realistically insert synthetic objects into existing photographs without requiring access to the scene or any additional scene measurements. With a single image and a small amount of annotation, our method creates a physical model of the scene that is suitable for realistically rendering synthetic objects with diffuse, specular, and even glowing materials while accounting for lighting interactions between the objects and the scene. We demonstrate in a user study that synthetic images produced by our method are confusable with real scenes, even for people who believe they are good at telling the difference. Further, our study shows that our method is competitive with other insertion methods while requiring less scene information. We also collected new illumination and reflectance datasets; renderings produced by our system compare well to ground truth. Our system has applications in the movie and gaming industry, as well as home decorating and user content creation, among others.
Efficient Algorithm for the Linear Complexity of Sequences and Some Related Consequences
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

The linear complexity of a sequence $s$ is one of the measures of its predictability. It represents the smallest degree of a linear recursion which the sequence satisfies. There are several algorithms to find the linear complexity of a periodic sequence $s$ of length $N$ (where $N$ is of some given form) over a finite field $F_q$ in $O(N)$ symbol field operations. The first such algorithm is The Games-Chan Algorithm which considers binary sequences of period $2^n$, and is known for its extreme simplicity. We generalize this algorithm and apply it efficiently for several families of binary sequences. Our algorithm is very simple, it requires $βN$ bit operations for a small constant $β$, where $N$ is the period of the sequence. We make an analysis on the number of bit operations required by the algorithm and compare it with previous algorithms. In the process, the algorithm also finds the recursion for the shortest linear feedback shift-register which generates the sequence. Some other interesting properties related to shift-register sequences, which might not be too surprising but generally unnoted, are also consequences of our exposition.
DDI-100: Dataset for Text Detection and Recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Nowadays document analysis and recognition remain challenging tasks. However, only a few datasets designed for text detection (TD) and optical character recognition (OCR) problems exist. In this paper we present Distorted Document Images dataset (DDI-100) and demonstrate its usefulness in a wide range of document analysis problems. DDI-100 dataset is a synthetic dataset based on 7000 real unique document pages and consists of more than 100000 augmented images. Ground truth comprises text and stamp masks, text and characters bounding boxes with relevant annotations. Validation of DDI-100 dataset was conducted using several TD and OCR models that show high-quality performance on real data.
Neural ODEs for Image Segmentation with Level Sets
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

We propose a novel approach for image segmentation that combines Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) and the Level Set method. Our approach parametrizes the evolution of an initial contour with a NODE that implicitly learns from data a speed function describing the evolution. In addition, for cases where an initial contour is not available and to alleviate the need for careful choice or design of contour embedding functions, we propose a NODE-based method that evolves an image embedding into a dense per-pixel semantic label space. We evaluate our methods on kidney segmentation (KiTS19) and on salient object detection (PASCAL-S, ECSSD and HKU-IS). In addition to improving initial contours provided by deep learning models while using a fraction of their number of parameters, our approach achieves F scores that are higher than several state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms.
Controllable and Progressive Image Extrapolation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Image extrapolation aims at expanding the narrow field of view of a given image patch. Existing models mainly deal with natural scene images of homogeneous regions and have no control of the content generation process. In this work, we study conditional image extrapolation to synthesize new images guided by the input structured text. The text is represented as a graph to specify the objects and their spatial relation to the unknown regions of the image. Inspired by drawing techniques, we propose a progressive generative model of three stages, i.e., generating a coarse bounding-boxes layout, refining it to a finer segmentation layout, and mapping the layout to a realistic output. Such a multi-stage design is shown to facilitate the training process and generate more controllable results. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed method on the face and human clothing dataset in terms of visual results, quantitative evaluations and flexible controls.